CA-Sen: Steel, former CRP Chair and RNCer, Trashes Campbell
Shawn Steel, a former California Republican Party chairman and currently a RNC National Committeeman, trashed Tom Campbell and his alleged associations with Sami al-Arian in a post published on the conservative Flash Report.
After Campbell's ill fated support for the atrocious Prop 1-A, last year, mercifully defeated by over 60% of the voters, helping initiate the Tea Party Movement, Campbell lost all justification for seeking higher office. Like some Republicans, Campbell thought just a few more taxes will help "solve" the budget crisis. Campbell failed to understand the first rule for solvent government. It's the Spending Stupid. [...]
Add on Campbell's foreign policy chops, and its time to duck. There probably has not been anyone so little deserving the republican senate nomination, since......well its hard to find a parallel. Tom Kuchel? William M. Gwin?
Conservatives latched onto Campbell and his credentials on foreign policy several weeks ago. The attacks irked Campbell so much that in last week's debate, it appeared the Republican hopeful's game plan for the afternoon was to establish he wasn't, in fact, anti-Israel.
CA-Sen: Fiorina’s Hiring, Father’s Ruling Questioned in Book
A book due out on Tuesday notes a potentially troubling window between the time Carly Fiorina's father, a federal judge, ruled on a case heavily lobbied by the high-tech industry, and Fiorina's hiring as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
In July 1999, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joseph Sneed, Fiorina’s father, issued a ruling that made it far more difficult for class-action lawyers to file securities lawsuits. Breaking with two other courts of appeals, Sneed said a legal reform Congress passed in 1995 at the urging of high-tech executives besieged by such suits meant plaintiffs needed solid evidence of wrongdoing before they went to court.
Seventeen days later, Fiorina was named as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard with a compensation packaged valued at the time at between $80 million and $90 million.
The proximity in time of Fiorina’s hiring and Sneed’s ruling is laid out in a book released Tuesday, “Circle of Greed,” by Patrick Dillon and Carl Cannon. The book chronicles the rise and fall of one of America’s most successful plaintiffs’ lawyers, Bill Lerach, who was a target of Congress’s 1995 reform effort but continued to win billions in settlements even after it passed.
CA-Sen: Campbell Faces Questions on Israel from Conservatives
Carly Fiorina lodged harsh attacks on Tom Campbell, branding her fellow Republican senatorial hopeful as "anti-Israel" and raising connections with a Palestinian immigrant that pleaded guilty to working with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The charges are based on several articles published by conservative publications, Commentary Magazine and the American Spectator.
Spectator writer Philip Klein summarized:
While campaigning in 2000, U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell called for a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem, said that Israel received too much funding from the United States, argued that President Clinton was too pro-Israel, and recalled receiving a condolence phone call from Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat after he injured himself during a visit to the region.
Campbell called the attacks "bizarre" and "desperate" in a statement and later addressed them in an interview with a conservative blog. Klein slammed Campbell's defense of his record on Israel as "lies" and "distort[ions]."
Despite a defense from David Frum, it appears conservatives are not letting go of this attack.
CA-Sen: Fiorina’s Web of Failures
Carly Fiorina's campaign web operation is a series of absolute failures that turn into red meat for internet mockery. Fred Davis, former adman for John McCain's presidential campaign, produces the Fiorina campaign's advertisements, including the "demon sheep" video. Becki Donatelli, president of Campaign Solutions, is the campaign lead on the campaign's web presence.
Apparently they are bad at what they do.
It started with the roll out of her Senate exploratory committee website. Visitors were greeted with an unusual flash animation that culminated in the introduction of the term "Carlyfornia." The roll out was a disaster with many observers calling it "the worst political website ever." (Leading the DSCC to mock her with a fantastic microsite.)
Fiorina's web operation reached epic levels of ridicule both in the press and online courtesy of Fred Davis' web video that took on a life of it's own. Literally. It quickly became known as the "demon sheep" video and sparked yet another Twitter hashtag of the same name that reached coveted "trending" status.
Her campaign released, under the direction of Donatelli, "deceptive" web ads that used -- without permission -- the image of, and gave the impression of support from, the Senate's newest Republican member, Scott Brown. He doesn't. (See them here.)
Fiorina's team rolled out their latest web hit -- presumably a Donatelli product -- this week. It looks like a Geocities website from the late 1990s. The sign up doesn't even collect zip code data -- an error that couldn't even be described as a "rookie mistake." Just plain awful and one of many signs that some people don't know what they are doing.
The biggest irony, of course, is that Fiorina once led HP, and drove it into the ground before her firing with a $21.4 million golden parachute. An independent attack site, which uses Fiorina's name as the domain address, questions Fiorina and her team's understanding of technology and the web, in general.
Does Carly "Get" Technology? [...]
Note: we registered the domain name carly-fiorina.com two days after she announced her run for the US Senate; the domain had not been acquired by her campaign team!
It seems as though failure is contagious.
Updated A source with the Campbell campaign noted a tweet from Fiorina's campaign and submitted it as her latest web failure.
A few problems with that: 1. The diarist at RedState is not a front-page editor, but an irregular poster with only two posts to his name. The post she's referring to hasn't been recommended even once.
2. However, his one other diary did get a few recommendations. In that post back in November, he attacks the "McCain wing" of the party, specifically saying that they should "push out Carly Fiorina in California for Chuck DeVore." He said RINOs "infecting" the Senate "need to die."
3. Both of his posts so far have called McCain, who's backing Fiorina, a RINO.
CA-Sen: DeVore No Shows on Maldonado Vote
Chuck DeVore was the lone Republican that did not show up for the confirmation vote of Abel Maldonado for lieutenant governor. Maldonado was rejected by the State Assembly yesterday. John Wildermuth at Fox and Hounds:
GOP Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, the man who would be senator, didn’t cover himself in glory either. He was the lone Republican to take a walk on the Maldonado vote.
For DeVore, the decision also was a political one. The blueprint for his longshot effort to win the GOP U.S. Senate primary is to become the poster boy for California conservatives and snag their votes in June. Right-leaning organizations like the California Republican Assembly and various anti-tax groups, whose support DeVore desperately needs, have been howling for Maldonado’s scalp for supporting the tax hikes in last year’s budget.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t do DeVore’s street cred with the rest of the party any good to be on record as the one Republican to join Assembly Democrats in cutting Maldonado off at the knees. So rather vote his conscience, the party line or a coin flip, DeVore decided not to vote at all.
Apparently leadership is not showing up to vote for your principles out of political expediency.